Language In Clarissa, Evelina And Pride And Prejudice

air of mystery and possibility to the transition of power
from one generation to the next.
The legal tendency of the eighteenth century, then,
was to express relationships in terms of transactions.
Marriage was viewed as a property transaction and the
legal rights of females were subjects of "inexhaustible
interest"; the law, which gave men a financial interest
in the chastity of women, reinforced this view (Langford
6-7). As soon as she was contracted to a marriage, a
woman lost all right to dispose of her property without
the consent of her future husband. At the same time, a
husband became the guardian of all legitimate children,
and as such, had the right to take them away from their
mother if he desired (Williams 6). A womanf s obedience
to her husband, parents and family property, religion and
moral authority could all be means of protection against
predatory male behavior (Calder 16). A slip from the
rigid rules of life by a young eighteenth-century woman
could mean a dangerous trip into the real world of
patriarchal power and politics, a trip often iterated in
the pages of the emerging novel.
The obsession of the public with strict settlement
visited authors as well as everyone else. Those authors
who wrote inheritance novels were usually involved with